My Take on Educational Blogs

    Educational blogging is something that allows students, teachers, parents, etc., to come together and and write about different experiences and beliefs that they have within the education world. According to Vanderbilt Universities Center for Teaching, educational blogging is a kind of social media tool that allows one to share ideas with authentic audiences and to engage those audiences in conversation are so many different things that can be talked about when it comes to education, that the amount of topics you could write about are virtually endless. Using blogging while teaching is a great way to involve parents on your teaching philosophies, and a way for them to learn deeper information about you as a whole that they might not get from you just being their child's teacher. Educational blogging isn't just something teachers can do either, there is also opportunities for students to write about many things as well. They are able to express their thoughts, and have it reach a wider audience rather than just their teachers. By students having an education blog, their parents, teachers, friends, and others from the community are able to see what they are writing about. 

    I read three blogs overall, and I will tell you the information that I learned while reading them! The first blog I read was Molly Milam's blog about mental healthcare in schools. I learned so much about mental healthcare in schools that I had never knew before. There were a lot of statistics that shocked me, such as 

Black and white photo of a young 
child doing virtual school, alone in 
his room. 

only half of youth received care for their mental health struggles in the past year. This is very sad to me because children struggle with mental health concerns much like adults, but it is often hard to express or understand your emotions, so it often gets overlooked. This will effect the students schoolwork because student silently struggle, which makes them unable to focus, have limited motivation, and be socially isolated. I also learned about NAMI, which is an organization that stands for public policies and practices that should promote mental health awareness. The next blog I read was Allison Schaumberger's post about the effects of virtual schooling. This was another super interesting one to read because it is something that I haven't read into a bunch. I know how virtual schooling effected me in college, but I don't know much about the younger schooling years. Virtual learning was generally flexible, so it gave students less of a restricted feeling during a restrictive time. One disadvantage to virtual schooling, is that it requires a lot of self discipline and encouragement to get the work done. I know that this is something I have struggled with a lot when it comes to virtual school, because I will put off my assignments until the last minute. My experiences with virtual learning began in March 2020 when I was a senior in high school. I hope that this world will never have to go through something like that again, but it did open many doors for us in terms of flexible schooling. The third and final blog I read, was Suzy Hill's post about growing class sizes.

Children sitting in a smaller class  `
size which allows for teacher to
give more one-on-one time. 

 I tried to pick blog posts to read, that I don't have a ton of prior       knowledge on. Out of the three blog posts I read, this one is by far   the one I knew the least about. I now know how vital class size is   to a successful school year. Having smaller classrooms allows for   teachers to be more attentive and involved throughout the   student's school days. Having a small classroom size allows for   teachers to do more one-on-one work with students, and makes it   easier to create relationships with all students. I learned that   research shows in college classes, that more students will go if it has a smaller class size. This is interesting to me, because I am the same way. This year all my classes have about 15-20 people in them, and I throughly enjoy going to all my classes everyday. I have created relationships with all my teachers, and that gives me the motivation to come to class. If these classes had 50-100+ people in them, I can't say whether I would have the motivation to go and participate like I do currently. The last thing I liked about Suzy's post, is how she explained the cost of smaller classrooms. Throughout the country, there is a shortage of teachers. Some people neglect smaller classrooms because they don't think the smaller class is simply worth the price tag that is comes with. I learned so much from reading my peer's blog posts!! 

     Educational blogging is something that I had never even heard of before taking ETEC 486. I have learned so much about the importance and not so important advantages and disadvantages technology has on our students and staff. Overall, I think educational blogging is one of those things that just has more benefit than not. Although I have only had my blog for approximately 2 months, I think that is is something I will decide to implement within my own classroom. I want to teach younger students (Kindergarten-2nd), so it would not be appropriate to assign them to write an entire blog post. I think that it is something I would do more for the parents of my students as a way to connect with them. These blog posts can consist of weekly updates surrounding what the students will be learning in each subject, future field trips and why they are beneficial, and any other information I deem appropriate to share to them.  Overall, I think that education blogging is a great tool for every teacher, and I can definitely see myself using this in the future!